


Kaijus? No, We Are Gods

by lovesicksidekick



Category: Night In The Woods (Video Game), Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bipolar Newton Geiszler, Multi, Mystery, Other, Stacker Pentecost Is A Good Dad, kaijus are... olden gods?, pac rim characters put in the nitw universe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-12 08:02:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19565131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovesicksidekick/pseuds/lovesicksidekick
Summary: Mako isn't Mae-Mae anymore. She comes back home, to Possum Springs, and is loved again like nothing changed. Yet she's the only one who seems to have remained the same.Possum Springs is haunted these days, she hears. People stop sleeping, and people go missing. Newt tells her to stop searching for old mysteries, but she doesn't.It's more than just Old Gods. It's more than just radioactivity. It's more than just sleepwalking. We're all just shapes, she learns, until we find ourselves speaking face-to-face to a species long gone.It's a town of dreamers. And Mako? Well, Mako has nightmare eyes.





	Kaijus? No, We Are Gods

Nightmare eyes. Mako looks into the slightly tilted mirror, and she feels it crack under her stare. From the ground, it looks big, like grandpa's cuckoo clock. Just made it home, only to be stuck trying to find what home is again. She took off her shoes half-way through the walk back, through the tracks, past that one kid's house, the one who begged her to stay so he could do poetry at her. He seemed kind of lonely, no cars in the driveway, but she probably did too. Possum Springs is the only city that feels real, but she's not sure if that's good enough anymore. Either way, she's back, to whatever “home” is.

Her hair has been soaked by the rain and dried so many times, by the time she knocked on her door (is it even hers anymore? Has it ever been?) she looks half stray-dog, half insane. There, in the doorway, her dad still looked just the same. He always did. Her step-mother was only a vague shape next to him, she was uneven and blurred out like college, like clouds, like static, like everything else in the world to her. To her, he was like a rock, like a promise, like something you'd pocket for luck later. Back there, in the big city, she really should've put her dad-sized rock in her pockets like a souvenir, and stopped looking for things in the dark. All she did was snap, beat someone up, and come home. 

Possum Springs is stagnant. It's warm, it's humid, and becomes emptier everyday, somehow without it ever losing its background chatter. There's people, but no real living. She misses the big city, with its buzzing taxis, colorful shops and diversity, but here she is, in a small canadian town without its own hospital, nevermind its own LGBT center, or indigenous center for that matter, or anything that tells other towns: we have standards, you're welcome here. Maybe she likes it because she's never been accepted here, yet is always tolerated in the background of something or other. Maybe she just wanted to see disappointment in her parents' faces. But her mother is long dead, deep in the mines, and her father has a look of resigned dedication. Her father, always perfect. Always seeming out of reach, too smart for her, too nice for her. She used to be polite, people say. She used to be such a nice girl. Her therapist's voice echoes: “Running away doesn't hurt anyone.” It does, doesn't it? She sees it in the way the strict Stacker Pentecost hovers around her bedroom door after bringing her bags, looking around like a criminal, caught red-handed. She sees it in how hurried her step-mother's cooking was, yet how long she took washing up the kitchen after dinner, after learning she's a drop-out. There's disappointment in there, yet this is a woman who knows she's a replacement for someone who's missed, and knows to keep it shut. Mako, if nothing else, is grateful for that much.

She had smashed her old laptop a long, long time ago, when she decided to leave. She wasn't even mad, only antsy, her head too full, her hands too empty. Everything was so much. Everything is always so much, even after she left. Or maybe it was too calm then, and that's when something in her brought her back. She doesn't really like stability, her childhood too full of moving away, new schools, new houses, new friends. Her mother's corner of the bed too empty. Now it sits with a stranger's perfume, a hairbrush, and a ring. She doesn't know what to feel about that, but her dad seems happy enough. Late June is bringing all kinds of morose chatter in town, overworked people too tired to think of winter coming soon. The streets are sort of damp from summer rain, people aren't bothering to mow their lawns anymore, and everyone has noses in newspapers and phones to avoid looking at eachother. Only teenagers seem to hang out near the docks downstairs, with the pretzel stand, or in a park, or anywhere that's not some lawn chairs on a shitty balcony, involving awkward weather talks. Maybe teenagehood is underrated.

“Mae-Mae? Mako? Am I dreaming again? I remembered you taller.” The dinner is full for once, but here's Tendo Choi, in all his splendor. Still somehow manages to make grease stains look effortless and not... repulsive. “Did you know that they didn't want me to wear a uniform here? The audacity.”

“Tendo, you're the trendiest burger maker in these parts. Maybe someday you'll go to college to learn, what, culinary sciences?”

“First things first, I'm a waiter. Secondly, college is your thing, dear girl!” His apron is neatly tied but she can see a rosary tied around his wrist very messily, not quite covered by a frilly sleeve. He moves it slightly out of sight when he notices her noticing.

“Things change.” 

“That they do, don't they? Well,” he meticulously places someone's change into the cash machine, “I think you'll find Newt and Hermann are the abnomaly as of late. But maybe they're just weird, those two.”

“Everything is weird, Tendo,” she says, and the way she pouts really means: I'm so glad you're still you.

*

There's something about this town that feels stuck in place. The town council tries and tries to bring changes, or change things for worse, but they don't make it any better or any worse in the end. It just is what it is. A mining town, lost on the map, with younger adults leaving in bunches, and old folks going quiet. Germ tells her it's weirdly soothing to know nothing good or bad ever happens here. She doesn't really know how to answer, but Germ is just some kid, and kids know too much sometimes. Last night, she jumped on his trampoline and ate sloppy joe's and wondered about life, the life their parents led when they were young. It was rough in here, in this capitalistic mindset, even Stacker, the proper father type, used to cause ruckus to demand better rights. His own father had owned the Company, something of a underworld scheming against rich men who owned all the businesses and let families starve. It involved stealing teeth, and many bar fights, so she's fairly sure she wants to hear that story. But Stacker, ever so against shocking her, keeps it to himself. Maybe it'll take her robbing a bank and marrying off to some crime lord to get him to see her as more than his little princess. She's not sure she ever wants him to, though. When your father is someone so prim and proper, having him give you warm hugs and treat you fragile and small makes you feel... special. She wishes she didn't feel guilty for ruining her own life, because he's very obviously proud of her and hopeful for her. He's always been a bit too optimistic about his loved ones. But he was right about mom, she was a good mother, and maybe he'll be right about Mako too. Maybe someday, if he doesn't smother it out of her with sheer power of love.

The Snack Falcon feels like the ideal place to be in after having wasted your father's mortgage money on a college degree you never wanted, and gave up on without even a phonecall. The lights are so unnaturally bright they almost hurt, but she's already wearing sunglasses, to go along with her jean jacket. She's going for a “I'm from the big city, watch out” sort of look. It's seemed to fail on everyone thus far, but Newt? Newt is a safe bet. Actually, Newt is never safe for anyone, or anything.

“YOU'RE ALIVE! YOU STILL EXIST! YOU'RE IN MY SHOP! WHEN DID YOU GET BACK?” The rest of that was just a chant of “Mako! Mako! Mako” with arms raised up, involving a little bit of stumbling over the counter like a wild raccoon to reach her and sort of fall onto her. He's checking her vitals and patting her hair frantically. No one can never tell if he's about to yell very loud or laugh very loudly, and his voice is sort of stuck in that sharp high-pitched judging tone, while saying words that a 14 year old would find “cringy” and a little unbearable. He was always a little unbearable, in the best way possible.

“The big city wasn't big enough for you buddy, I couldn't bring you along.”

“That's fair, that's fair. Hey, guess what, I have a job now!” He spins around on a spinning chair in the employee room, that he sort of hoarded her into. “Hey, guess what, I kissed Hermann!”

“You what?”

“Hey, guess what, I'm clinically insane! Oh and hey, guess what too, I have a motorcycle now!”

“Tendo lets you use it?”

“Sometimes.”

A slight pause. “Never then, huh?”

“Oh, yeah, definitely never,” he rushes his hands through his already spiky hair, and he looks sort of feverish, but it might be the weather. “Possum Springs is weird lately. But fortune favors me lately too, dude. My life? Totally on track. I want a baby. I mean, Hermann wants a baby. I mean, we're having a baby,” he sort of full-body vibrates at that somehow, “Adopted, that is, or a donor or something. 'Donor' sounds like I'm stealing organs. They say not yet though, because I have a poor man's job. Is it really a minimal wage job if I get to eat free snacks and smash lamps they never use in the parking lot?”

Something in her feels really happy, but also really scared. “A husband... or, whatever Hermann is... a job you've had for more than a year... Even you are getting all... adult, and mature. Look at you, doing it, making it out there. That still happens in Possum Springs? Changes? Love?” Newt gives her a weird look at that, but before long they're talking about nonsense, talking about things they both already know, but enjoying the company, enjoying each other again. Newt is like a brother to her, an older one. But the “older” part of that feels sort of bitter now. It carries more weight – better, smarter, stronger. He's here, at a Possum Springs supermarket, but he's been to university for years before that, and he only moved here for his lover. He wasn't born here, yet he belongs more than she ever will be. She imagines Hermann's ruffled, posh look, the way they used to remind her to eat, to take her meds, to reach out to her father, to make something of herself. She thinks of them, of that personified version of every teacher who looked at her and trusted her to do better, and she feels nostalgic and somehow very, very upset.

It takes her some time to fall asleep that night, and when she does sleep, it doesn't feel right, it feels like she's dying, and when she wakes up there's blood in her nose and breakfast on her bed. It was the anniversary of her mother's death. She slept through it. She slept a whole day. The plate is cold.

*

“Hey dad, did the Becket twins... did they used to like, mind-meld? I wish I had a twin,” she starts, sipping lukewarm hot chocolate, the marshmallows swimming to the top. “I wish I had anything. I wish I was something,” her nose keeps getting closer and closer to her oatmeal bowl, like she's twelve again, caught sticking her hand into a friend's birthday cake again.

“I think when you love someone, you become a little bit telepathic with them.”

“Like when I say I don't want donuts but you get me some anyway?”

“Just like that, princess. Listen,” he has this air of safety, and his sweater smells slightly like campfire and cinnamon. She loves him so much sometimes she can hardly reconciliate with the idea of her having left. It felt urgent back then, it felt like she was going to explode, but doctors say her mind was just sick and it was a major burn-out. She loves how he pats her cheek when she's snarky with him, she loves how many people at his work used to fear him but he's so gentle with his friends and with his own. She loves feeling loved, and that's sort of hard to admit, especially after everything.

“Mom would be very happy for you and Juliet,” her eyes don't even water at all, her face isn't red, her teeth aren't clenched. She's sincere. “She would've done the same. Find love, I mean. I'm making this difficult.” He almost says something about that, but she waves her hand, “I want this to be difficult. Difficult means growth. I haven't grown since I was 15, dad. You kept me safe, but I didn't want to be safe. I wanted to let it all out, I wanted to make dumb mistakes, and know what I was and what I wasn't, you know? And that meant leaving. And that meant hurting you.”

“Leaving is never abusive. You know what is? Abusing. It was abuse, Mako, you have to let it hurt.”

“You're not supposed to speak ill of the dead.” But it feels weak, it feels like acceptance, and he holds her ever so gently, and she thinks of all those years of hiding under the bed, waiting for daddy to come home, to save her. She thinks of looking at her mother and seeing nothing stare back, only a shell. She forgets how to forget that, and it comes back, and it doesn't stop.

He dries her tears with a tissue, like a good father, and he goes, “You're my daughter. You can be Juliet's if you choose to, just say the word. But her?” His voice shakes, the voice of a man who's got nothing left to fight but all to protect. “No matter how many years she's been dead... she decided to give you up. She stopped being your mother the very day she tried to change you. You're alive to live her consequences. I'm alive to love you. I don't want to turn into Herc. I don't want to neglect who needs me the most.”

“Chuck turned out fine.” Some more tears. “He's got a dog, he has a house.”

“It catches up to you. You can be 30, 50 years old, it catches up to you. You have to let it. I'm not letting Herc near this house, and I'm not letting the dead guilt my little girl anymore. I will never regret letting you have your own life out there. And I'm not regretting letting you back in your own house.”

“Talking hurts, sometimes.”

“That was a whole lot of words, huh?”

“Can you nap with me?” Time just barely hit 2 o'clock, and he had work that day. He was the most hard-working man she's ever known, but she might be biased. It was hard to stand unaffected by Stacker Pentecost, with the wisdom of a guy who's cared about this town more than anyone ever will. Someone who saw this town through war, governmental starvation, and even darker things. Someone who found the time to be her father, too. A husband, soon. A leader. A good man.

“Sounds like you've got a deal, young lady.”

*

On her way back from accompanying Tendo to his “actual grown-up job” at the Factory, she childishly spends some time trying to catch fireflies from the long grass, out there near the windmill. They're lighting up like lanterns, and she remembers Chuck's puppy spending late nights entertained, tied up in the yard, snapping his mouth at them with his tail wagging back and forth. Instead of muddish yellow, they seem to glow bright green this year. She liked yellow better. 

A not-so-familiar face enters her view and sheepishly, she realizes how close the wind-mill is from the local cementary with its dirt trail and frivolous statues. The regular graves themselves lay unattended, from poorer families who cannot afford even having a text on it other than their bare names. That's always made her vaguely upset, but it seems to be nobody's fault around here. Only something bigger, like the government, or maybe the Old Gods. Money's being sucked out of Possum Springs the past 10 years, down to its very bones. Literally. She turns her whole body towards Raleigh Becket. He's taller than ever, his hair so blonde it's almost white. He looks like a skeleton himself, like he's made of protein shakes and insomnia. He also looks like a ghost, but probably he gets that one a lot. With all of this, there's no way not to feel like a cookie-cutter version of a dead twin. A better, more praised twin. She looks at him and sees the same bad hair, same drooping smile, same voice as Yancy. He's sick too, she knows. They both were stuck in the hospital for a while, maybe longer than she'll ever know, every few childhood years stuck in the same hospital bed. Yancy's body gave out too soon, at 20 years old. Raleigh still seems like a ghost from the past, even now. But he sure tries not to act like one.

The praised child of “those Beckets” who came from the big city to personally judge this town and micromanage it with their old money, he has a lot going on. Also known as: he's a full-grown manchild, but his mommy and daddy are nice enough and have big cash, so everyone gives him the first place in everything. Mako has a particular history with him, one of saving his ass when he was bullied in middle-school, and then of reluctant friendship when he lost his brother, when he was too cocky and told her he didn't want to associate with “crazies” like Newt, or with people who, in his words, “would never make it out of this hole.” She would though, he promised her, with a thumbs up. It's rare to see someone not grow any older than their teenage mannerisms. Maybe that makes him lucky, or naive, she's not really sure. The way he's touching the grave seems more like an anxious habit, like he's been here everyday for the past year of his life. He probably has. Having money won't give you anyone back. Sometimes you need to work harder to keep the living by your side, than to beg ghosts to haunt you. She really, really hopes he's been working on himself, and not the way the bullies meant – the way she said it, which is, “the poor need your money Raleigh, but you need the poor to teach you how to be a fucking decent human being.” He wasn't a bad kid, but all this white privilege, upper middle-class ideals, and classist, mysogynistic mindset was ever going to give him is another punch in the face, and safety away from normal people. He looks just as smugly dressed today, but when he sees her he falls quiet in the middle of his nightly brother talk. Dead brother talk, that is. It's kind of creepy when you say it like that.

“Hey Ray, funny seeing you,” she drawls, feeling like 200 bucks right now. She fumbles with the lip balm in her pocket, and steels herself. She feels ready to laugh. A rich boy has nothing on her. “I've been to college. Then I dropped out of college. Like those college drop-outs you hate.” She can already hear him, tired but ready to preach the same old recycled garbage about “working hard” giving you everything you want. The rich don't care about that. They just want to feel better about themselves. Thieves, all of them. She's not even going to fight, just smile and leave. Smile and leave. Like a girl who's better, and has nothing to prove. She's going to take her dirty shoes through some more mud, and come back with something to hold all these fireflies tomorrow.

“I'm glad, Mako. I'm actually really, really glad.”

Distant birds chirp, an owl hoots sadly, but it's so dark she can't see it.

“What?”

The grass is soft under her hands, but the tree is itchy to rest her head on, and it's been slightly raining, so the bugs are flaring up enough to have Ray swat at them. It's kind of soothing, to be in a cementary. They call the paranormal scary, but everyone who's dead is just dead. Ghosts are just quiet. They don't hurt anyone, or anything anymore. Yancy's grave has engraved flowers in it, and the grass around it is kept much shorter than any other grave, probably from all the kneeling in front of it.

“I don't hate anyone anymore, Ma.”

“I told you, you can't nickname me Ma, it just sounds like I'm your mom, people will wonder,” she laughs, but her smile grows bitter.“I know it's a very complicated name, it's hard on your poor mouth, huh? At least you're not spewing japanese at me to impress me, this time.” 

She suddenly profoundly craves putting her two hands on her mother's grave, but it's forbidden territory. It's sort of ironic, refusing to see her mother's but regularly showing up at other cementaries, be it here or in the big city, and wanting to do it again soon, finding peace with the dead. Strangers' dead families give her peace, not hers. And now this. Yancy's grave is so familiar, almost nostalgic.

“It wasn't right. Yancy chewed me out about that after. I forced you to be my friend.” His voice isn't shaking, not the way it usually does with lies, no manipulative puppy eyes. “And I've been starting to listen to you more when you were gone than I ever did when you were here. I didn't need anyone to teach me into being better, or give me History 101, I just needed to stop listening to others like me and look more into it. You were always smarter than me. College is missing out on you.”

She stops to think. “You did force me, yeah.” That feels weird to say, too dramatic, but a lot of her highschool life involved coddling her white, straight friends on issues they didn't care about. A lot of “friends” were just people who relied on her too much, or wanted her to be polite, and reserved, and pretty, and everything her mom was told to be. A lot of highschool was being with people, but being so alone.

“Ma,” he starts, but goes, “Mako,” and she reaches up, all the way up, to ruffle his stupid hair.

“Society sucks, but society loves you. And you're really, really dumb. But you're what, 22? Just do Yancy, and me, and all of this town right this time.”

“Got it.” 

“Make some new friends who aren't a Ken doll. And stop calling me Ma.”

“Got it, Mako.”

Maybe someday she'll let him call her Mae, but he's a stranger for now, and she is too.

She opens up the newspaper the next week, and it's actually a much older newspaper, it was in one of grandpa's boxes. It's a bit messed up from what she assumes was rain. She loves old things. On the front page though, she reads a nice story about a boy named Raleigh Becket who was legally disowned for running away with his dad's money and leaving it in homeless shelters. After his parents retired off to USA and he became head of the company, he also paid his employees to volunteer to help people in need instead, and openly published incriminating stories about the company, other companies they were affiliated with, and other CEOs. They bankrupted, but it was a magnificient bankrupt, a dramatic tale by Possum Springs standards. In the big city, probably no one cared. He now apparently has a husband and too many cats. Good for him.

She folds it but decides better and throws it into the trash, much too aware of how unusual that act is to the world at large, how pathetic it is that it's shocking, and how in the grand scheme of things the Becket scandal will only be a small drop of water in a much too big vase. How it's been a year since then, and even the middle-class are leaving town and never coming back, and other small cities go through the same, and big cities are just as poor, but better at managing it. If you're lucky. She kind of wants to make her own luck, this time.

*

Chuck's Pretzel Stand sucks. As much as she loves him reinventing himself, with pretzels, she still hates him for the sake of hating him. Most of his clients are either teenagers, or old fishermen, too old to taste anything anymore. She knows his dad sucks even more than he does, though, and she knows he hasn't been a jerk since he was in his early teens. She knows he figured out him shit-talked other women so loudly linked to him realizing he's not a girl, and that he needed to treat girls better, but still. She'll always remember his awkward phase. And steal his terrible pretzels, and run away from his guard dog, who is currently all of 6 months old and can't run very good. Chuck's girlfriend of 5 years looks like a pinup girl, tall hair, big eyes, she's seen her around town. Yes, she's allowed to poke his patchy beard, mock his outfits, pat his dog, and sort of hate him a little bit, in the jealous sibling way. He's still gruff, and moody, and it doesn't matter how much muscles he gets, she'll still punch his shoulder like he's 12. He probably reminds her of herself, in a way. Except she never fully grew out of it. Still bitter, still trying not to be mean, awkwardly navigating life. Chuck is like a disney princess story, except it's a prince, and his shirt is always slightly greasy from the pretzel making. But he treats his girl like a princess, so it works out.

It's almost 4o'clock when her phone feebly vibrates and she looks down to answer Newt's garbled texts. All she can make out is “pizza” and there aren't too many all-capsing, so he's not manic. Maybe depressed? She told him many, many times that pizza will only make him nauseous when he's in one of his down swings, no matter how good it looks. She makes a note to ask his... lover? Partner? Paramour? His Hermann, anyway, to cook him something with veggies and without cheese. Lactose makes him moody. She sharply looks around at absolutely no one, slightly offended and amused, at feeling like a busy mother. Is this what having a job feels like? Except, without the satisfaction of helping your friends?

She half-expects Newt's uncle to be playing his soft jazz tunes when she enters, but it's his shy, tall, predictable dad instead who welcomes her into the music shop. He's half tapping his foot to his computer's music, doing off-beat dancing moves without seeming to notice, but prompty straightened himself out when the door rang open, and offered a shaky smile. There's a tad of red up in his cheeks, for he's an old-school man, and proper men don't lose control of their limbs in such uncouth manners. He laughs at her shaking the water off her hair, half taking his coat off for her warmth until she says that no, she's not cold. He's wearing suspenders. She can already tell why he's the type to be excited about Hermann, of all people, being his child-in-law. His uncle probably gives him enough things to be huffy about for the both of them. Newt loves his uncle more each day that his beard grows longer and grayer and crazier, and wanted to be a clone of him as a kid, so you can tell his uncle's not exactly a popular (or respected) man in town. Hermann will have to make do.

She hovers for a minute while he fumbles to find the band practice room key, and he apologizes so many times she sort of wants to hug him. He's a busy man, but a kind man, a family man. He's not from around these parts, but fell in love with the town, and built a life here. She thinks of that everytime she starts hating the town, and it helps hating it a little less. 

“This way, this way.” He opens the door, like she doesn't know every inch of the room by now, every moment spent on that floor messing around as young teens, being the youngest one in the group of four, doing awful things to instruments. She sees the piano and something in her unfolds, her shoulders relax, and things click together perfectly. Her hair is a mess, like always, and it's the first thing that Hermann sees, and they do their huffy, endeared smirk. They probably remember her with bright blue hair, but it washed away with the years, now dark brown. She has more piercings than she used to, which she's sure he'll have a 'talk' to her about. On their bad days, they're just as scary as an old, drooling, grumpy cat sitting on a windowsill. Newt is playing with their hand like he's reciting a song with his painted, rough fingers, like he's just got a brand new guitar, or back when he used to type essays all day for university. The focused look doesn't sit right on his face, it's unusual, but when he looks up and sees Hermann looking back, he gets this droopy puppy smile, and Hermann tries very harshly to smooth his unbelievable spiky hair, as though in embarrassment at hers, and he melts into their arms. Their wheelchair, covered in stickers, with its red cushions and its big, sturdy wheels, keeps getting stuck in the speaker cords thanks to Newt moving it around to get them to look at him. Like a dog bothering a cat. He only listen to Hermann telling him that “Newton, someone's truly coming in, I'm not trying to get out of kissing you, you fool,” once Mako's awkward frame bumps into the microphone and it makes a very high-pitched noise that fills up the echoing room.

“Oh my god Hermann, Mako! Why didn't you tell me? Mako forgive him, he's so impolite.” She can feel Hermann's mouth opening to bicker, edging away from his seat cushion, “Do you want pizza? We have pizza! Everyone loves pizza!” He takes not one, not two, but three pizza boxes from Hermann's lap, who pointedly looks away. “ You seemed sad last time, so I bought three!”

“Sure, why not. That's very, very unreasonable, don't get me wrong, but I love you, so thanks. Pizza it is!” 

You haven't seen Hermann eat anything until you've seen them try to eat pizza in a proper manner. Tendo comes back eventually with coffee, a tad late because he's Tendo, and they start reminiscing like the childhood best friends they are. Newt and Hermann much older than her, Tendo a bit older too. It feels like she's supervised by three overbearing older siblings, but she'll allow it.

“So how's the newspaper, Hermann? How's your dad?”

She's not sure why, but sitting next to him, she sees Newt squeeze Hermann's hand very tightly under the table, and looks up sideways at them when Hermann doesn't look back. “He's very well. Absent as of late. He's mostly on business trips. The newspapers is doing fantastic, thank you very much.” Their head lifts up, in that snobby way of theirs, but she can tell how much love they have for their work. Their company is the only one that's hiring new workers at a steady rate, and honestly, all of Possum Springs rests on their shoulders this year, with all the government cuts and bankrupting. “I've been looking into the usual, history of journalism, english lexicography, cultural ethics, to supervise my writers better. It's very exciting.”

“Woah buddy, calm down there, we'll be jumping to the ceiling if you get us any more enthralled,” whistles Tendo, but he softens it. “You should show me around the place sometime, I'm looking for more temp jobs to fill up my time. What with the Factory being not as busy in fall.”

“It's not fall yet, though. The end of summer is busy. Aren't you tired?”

“Summertime keeps my spirits high, I have energy to spare!” His hand clenches on his rosary, and his foot taps in a way Mako is pretty sure is restless. But his face, as always, holds a steady smile, and a steadier stare, and his other hand is scrolling through his phone. His aura has always been one of determined calmness, like he can't be touched by anything others are, like he's trying to make you forget he has basic needs, and somehow convince you. Even in childhood, he wore mini-suits. Sometimes, it feels like a mask. If she looks any closer, she thinks she could see some bags under his eyes, covered up faintly by makeup, or if she went to his house, maybe some dishes are piling up, or the bills are. But it's Tendo, and you don't press further with Tendo, you just wait it out.

“Speaking of summertime, I'm lonely this week. Anyone up for something later?”

“Oh, I'm working at the newspaper Mako, I don't know.” Hermann speak for: no, I don't want to, I'm married to my work.

“The Snack Falcon is hiring, you could join me! Falcon buds!” 

“Don't think so, but thank you for the offer. Are you free this weekend?”

“I'm busy, like, super busy. Busier than that bee from the Bee Movie, dude. Like, at least 10 bees. Weight of the world on my shoulders. No can do.”

Newt speak for: I'm going to force Hermann into a date. And that huff Hermann did then meant very explicitly: I'm very excited and trying not to kiss you.

“Tendo?”

All three heads turn towards Tendo, and she's forgot he sometimes gets twitches in his face, but he had one very badly then. Tics, almost. “Look at the time,” he says, and acts like someone just called his phone. “Have a nice week, Mako!” He's out the door in instants.

“Um, what was that?”

“What was? What wasn't? Hey look there's more pizza suddenly,” Newt pulls her arm towards the stage, and suddenly she's eating more junkfood, then stupidly playing instruments like they used to, together, and she's singing softly along, and she's doing pretty alright all things considering. The stage feels so good under her feet, and the ceiling still has glowing stars. But without Tendo the beat never seems right. It falls flat.

Sometimes it feels like Possum Springs is going to its own beat, and she has the tune on the tip of her tongue, but she keeps skipping lines. And others notice, and she's left behind. It feels like words are never enough. She misses the comfort of being lost in a sea of strangers, unknown, beating to her own drums. She misses feeling like she's not just a bomb waiting for the right time. She misses herself, the self her friends knew and loved, and she misses her evil mother, and she misses the rain, and she misses playing her mother's piano, before they gave it away. She misses those fireflies, and she craves the outdoors, she craves not having to think of how to act or how to speak. She waves Newt goodbye that afternoon, Hermann hugs her very quickly and very sternly. In their eyes, she sees something akin to pride, and can tell the nostalgia kicks in. But she's done things that changed her and she's been away for too long, and all that look does is make her feel put on the spot. Her chest is warm, her smile is strained, and she doesn't go home at all. Her feet start to hurt, but she stays under the stars, and she walks until she feels Possum Springs deep within her, like a song.

*

She doesn't remember falling asleep. She's not sure she did, and she's not sure she's awake either. She's in permanent transit. Her eyes open in a forest, but she sees herself from the outside looking in, and her eyes glow in the dark. She's fairly sure human eyes don't do that. She watches herself digging in the ground, hair full of dirt and whatnot, nails almost bleeding. In this state, watching herself, she feels her heart clench and tears sting. It incompasulate everything she's been feeling that brought her back here: alone, frantic, hopeless, digging into a grave, begging for forgiveness. She's not sure it's her mother's, but this dream is very unfair, she thinks. Cruel. Her eyes are glowing green, unnatural, brighter than any trees and any television, weirder than anything she's ever seen. It seems to seep into her skin around her eyes, which is also faintly vibrating and glowing. Glowing, glowing, glowing. Until it hurts to look at. Then she sees in her hands: a small box with a symbol. Her own hands are almost vibrating, and she has to frantically shake her left hand to get it back to normal, enough so that she can get it open. Inside, it's a substance, something not right. Drugs? No, her eyes narrow from afar, and then suddenly she seems to be slammed back into her body, and she's taking this thing and putting it in her mouth, and it burns her, and she feels herself exploding with light.

She wakes up at 7 in the living room, shaking, clothes filthy, having apparently thrown up on the carpet, her eyes feeling strange, and very grateful for the empty house. Why she's covered in dirt, she doesn't want to know. She's mostly annoyed at her own migraine, and her own subconscious. All she can think of is that symbol, and how it all felt like a cheap horror movie, one she didn't even want to finish watching. It's only really hurtful by making her think of her mother. Which she very much didn't need right now.

She calls her step-mother, because she feels like garbage, she's had a rough few days. She's had a rough few years, a rough life even. She knows Juliet's not really all bad, and she wants to offer a peace treaty. She calls because she's finally made a decision for once. The decision? Being a part of society, and a decent human being. 

She makes small talk, emphasis on the small, and even goes as far as to ask her if they can meet up for lunch. Juliet seems pleased, and is more polite than ever. “The windmill,” she says, “I'll go home quickly and cook something for us.” The innocence that shows in thinking Mako was out doing things by now makes her vaguely guilty. But she cleans up, dresses up nicer than usual, and begins the long walk to the windmill, where Juliet spends most of her break hours, between shifts.

She opens the door, and the sun is bright, and the air is loud with working men, and she reaches for her future and her past, and lets them hold hands.

She's ran out of excuses, and she's running out of luck. The nightmares are eating her alive.

It's about time she gets vulnerable. It's been a long, long summer. It's been a few days of silence, and of mourning, and of hurting people who love her. But she takes a step outside, and she walks, and her feet feel light. She knows she'll be fine. She'll make it fine. 


End file.
